Vaccination Is Always The Safer Choice

On Parenting

The causes of autism, a complex disorder characterized by problems with communication and social interaction, are unknown, and there is no cure yet.

In 12 days of hearings in Washington, D.C. in June, some 5,000 parents who think vaccinations caused their children's autism presented their claims for compensation at "federal vaccine court."

Many of them believe thimerosal, a synthetic mercury preservative once used in vaccines such as the measles-mumps-rubella combination given to young children, is the culprit, or at least a trigger for autism in kids with predispositions to the disorder.

Others think the measles vaccine itself harms some kids.

But government studies and scientific research show little or no link between vaccines and autism.

Most scientists think genetics play a key role in who gets autism, perhaps combined with multiple co-factors.

One Department of Justice official at the hearings said the autism-vaccine theory is based on "junk science."

That's backed up by the fact that numbers of autism diagnoses haven't gone down since thimerosal was taken out of children's vaccines in 2001.

And medical authorities also discount claims that skyrocketing autism numbers mean we have a new epidemic on our hands.

One in 150 children have some form of autism spectrum disorder, according to recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's a huge increase over statistics from before 1990.

But experts say the numbers are higher because we're better at recognizing what was once a much more hidden problem, its victims labeled retarded, learning disordered or schizophrenic and shuttled off to institutions.

Still, some parents and public officials, including Rep. Dave Weldon, R-FL, think the U.S. is falling short of ensuring vaccine safety.

Weldon, along with Rep. Carolyn Malony, D-NY, introduced bills in Congress this year to ban all mercury use in vaccines, including flu shots, first for children and pregnant women, then for adolescents and adults by 2009.

Weldon also wants to create an independent office to investigate and evaluate vaccines, saying the CDC, which oversees vaccines, but also is charged with promoting their use, has an inherent conflict of interest.

Is he promoting junk science?

Certainly it can't hurt to remove mercury -- a known neurotoxin -- from pediatric vaccines.

But that may not be the most important aspect of the issue, if Weldon's bills pass and have this effect: Reassuring the growing numbers of parents who are foregoing immunizations that the minor risks associated with vaccinating kids pale in comparison to the huge dangers of not doing so.

Diseases such as polio, smallpox and measles have largely vanished in the States because of mass vaccinations, but they still exist in the developing world.

On our shrinking planet, the threat of contagious disease leapfrogging the globe is very real, as the spread of SARS proved.

And the truth remains that the unvaccinated put everyone else, including newborn babies, at greater risk of infection from deadly disease.

Colorado has the highest percentage of unvaccinated children due to parents opting out, and those kids were 22 times more likely to get measles than immunized children, according to the American Medical Association.

A measles epidemic in 1991 in Philadelphia among members of two faith-healing churches who eschewed vaccines resulted in seven deaths, the AMA reports.

It's hard to blame parents worried about possibly impairing their child for life for shying away from shots.

Or fault parents who have watched seemingly healthy children suddenly regress into autism shortly after receiving vaccinations for assuming there may be a link.

The issue lays bare a jarring conflict between parental rights and social responsibility that won't be easily solved.

That's why the more Washington can do to reestablish trust in vaccinations needed to safeguard the public health, the better. *